AI Company Perplexity Fires Back at News Corp over Lawsuit: They 'Wish This Technology Didn't Exist'

AI search startup Perplexity has issued a sharp rebuke to the copyright infringement lawsuit filed against it earlier this week by media giant News Corp.

TechCrunch reports that in a blog post published Thursday, Perplexity responded to allegations that it engaged in massive copyright violations of content from News Corp publications like the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post. The startup took an adversarial tone, suggesting that media companies like News Corp “wish this technology didn’t exist” and “prefer to live in a world where publicly reported facts are owned by corporations.”

The 600-word post made numerous bold claims about the motivations of media companies in filing these lawsuits, of which there are now around three dozen targeting generative AI tools. However, Perplexity offered little factual evidence to back up its assertions, simply stating “this is not the place to get into the weeds of it all.”

Notably, the blog post did not directly address the central accusation in News Corp’s suit — that Perplexity copies publisher content on a huge scale and then competes with those same publishers for audience. Instead, the startup implied that news organizations want to prevent the existence of AI tools altogether.

This claim is difficult to square with the fact that many media companies, News Corp included, have multi-year partnerships with AI firms like OpenAI to showcase their journalism within products like ChatGPT. Perplexity itself has revenue sharing deals with legacy publishers like Time and Fortune. Rather than wishing AI didn’t exist, the facts suggest media firms simply don’t find Perplexity’s terms agreeable.

The post did push back on a couple specific allegations, denying that Perplexity regurgitates full article text and countering the lawsuit’s claim that it was unresponsive to News Corp’s outreach. However, other points ventured into speculation, with Perplexity questioning if the “salacious” examples News Corp cited would even be used in the actual case.

While the public blog offered more indignation than illumination, Perplexity’s eventual court filings may shed more factual light on the details and dynamics at play in this high-stakes legal battle over AI’s use of copyrighted content. As one of the most prominent AI search startups, how Perplexity navigates the dangers of intellectual property issues could have major ramifications for the future of the industry.